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Galley Tables

Only one candidate for the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly sat at the table at last night’s special meeting, where he faced assembly members, the mayor, and others to answer questions as part of the interview process.

The seat became available after Carol Austerman resigned last month. Up until a week ago, Dennis Symmons and Mel Stephens were both up for appointment, but at last night’s special session, Assemblywoman Rebecca Skinner expressed confusion over Stephens’ apparent withdrawal.

“It’s the seventh in the eighth memo, he says for the record, I did not withdraw my application,” she said.

Friend responded, “The way I read it was that Mel just thought it was inappropriate that he had his name in there… I took it as he was pulling his name off.”

The original memo Stephens wrote last week explained that he would be out of town this Thursday due to a misunderstanding about dates. He referenced borough code that would inhibit him from being interviewed and sworn in during the required window of time after Austerman’s resignation.

The memo suggested he would be ineligible and it would therefore be “inappropriate” for him to be appointed, and Stephens stated in a recent memo that therefore he did not withdraw. The assembly clarified that Stephens was not in the running and interviewed the sole candidate, Dennis Symmons.

“I’ll start off with ‘why do you want to serve on the assembly?’” asked Mayor Friend.

“Being involved in the service district just kept opening my eyes more and more to what was going [on] locally,” said Symmons. “It just seemed like something better could be done – better, better, better. And I watched, I sat back and I watched. Whether I could be part of that better or not – watch, watch, watch. Ten years ago, I probably would have felt inadequate to participate. Today, I do not. Today, I want to be part of that betterment.”

Symmons elaborated on his desire to be involved in the community in an answer to another of Mayor Friend’s questions.

“What type of public service or volunteering have you done in the past?” asked Friend.

“Services District 1 has been the height of it,” said Symmons. “Never gave back to the community until I got on Service District 1. And it’s been really good. The more I’ve given back, the more I like that. At the risk of sounding like a taker, I did not realize how much I’ve taken, harvested my life, until I started giving back. And it’s to this community that I will live the rest of my life in.”

At the end of the interview, the assembly agreed unanimously to appoint Symmons to the vacant seat. Symmons stayed at the table for the rest of the special meeting and into the work session that followed as an official assembly member. He will serve until the October municipal election, when the seat will be on the ballot for a one-year term.

Not all employees in Alaska speak English proficiently, but the State Department of Labor and Workforce Development wants to make sure that all of them understand their rights. The department recently released several translations of its employee “frequently asked questions” pamphlet in different languages, including one in Tagalog.

According to the United States Census Bureau, Kodiak has a significant Filipino population. In 2010, Asians were the largest racial minority in the Kodiak Borough at almost 20 percent of the population with Filipinos making up around 17 percent.

The statewide supervising investigator for the Wage and Hour Administration, Joe Dunham, says the 23 questions in the pamphlet are an overview of basic wage and hour laws for overtime and minimum-wage eligible employees.

“What is minimum wage? What about overtime? Who gets overtime, who does not get overtime? Can I be paid salary? What about my final paycheck?” says Dunham. “Can they make deductions from my wages without my permission? So, it’s just simple everyday wage and hour questions that most of us come into contact with those questions at any particular job.”

While wage theft and labor abuse can occur, Dunham says some workers’ ignorance about United States labor laws could also be a matter of cultural difference.

“What turns out to be common in their culture turns out to be a violation in ours and very often, neither the employer nor the employee even knows about it,” says Dunham. “These questions are just something where employer-employee can look at this and say ‘Wow, I never knew that, maybe I should call up the Department of Labor and sit down and talk about it.’”

In the case that an employee feels they are being taken advantage of, they can report the issue to DOL investigators. Staff is also available to answer questions. To contact the Anchorage office, call 269 – 4900.

Tonight at a special Kodiak Island Borough Assembly meeting one item on the agenda is the interviewing and swearing in of a new assemblymember to fill the seat vacated by Carol Austerman when she resigned last month.

Initially, two candidates applied for the position, which would only last through the October Municipal Elections, but one of them, former Assemblyman Mel Stephens, withdrew from consideration. That left Dennis Symmons, who has served on Service District One and has run unsuccessfully for assembly before, as the last man standing. Symmons spoke with KMXT's Jay Barrett this morning about his reasons for seeking office.

Tonight's special assembly meeting will be at 7:30 p.m. in the borough building conference room. It will not be broadcast. A regularly scheduled work session will immediately follow.

Coming up this week, Bristol Bay sockeye may have been late but they're finishing in record territory; the Fish Board took action to protect Togiak fishermen; and buyers are struggling to keep up with the number of chum salmon flooding Norton Sound. All that, and the details behind the long awaited peace treaty over MSC labeling. We had help from KDLG's Dave Bendinger and Molly Dischner in Dillingham, KBBI's Shady Grove Oliver in Homer and KNOM's Emily Russell in Nome.

The Unification Church is including three stops in Alaska on its summer-long, worldwide road rally. “Peace Road 2015” started in the Lower 48 at the end of May, and will eventually be held in 120 countries.

The Peace Road rallies are for promoting the late Reverend Sun Myung Moon's dream of an intercontinental highway connecting six of the seven continents.

On Friday afternoon at 3, participants in Kodiak will bike from the church's Angel Garden Center on Selief Lane to St. Paul Harbor and back. There, the president of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, Michael Balcomb, will give a talk about the prospects for a tunnel under the Bering Strait as part of the world peace highway.

Afterwards, there will be a trek by car out to the Kodiak World Training Center in Chiniak for a barbecue, sports, music, and a bonfire. The public is welcome to all the activities.

The church’s coordinator for the event, Jonathan van Dorsten, says the gathering tomorrow is to remind people of the aim for world peace.

“The minister of our church is going to give a short talk and he’s going to elaborate more on the significance of the peace event that we’re holding," says van Dorsten. "Also, the mayor’s going to be there from what they told and me and she’s going to have the honor of passing on the flag. Then people that are gonna bike are gonna bike a short distance – a symbolic distance.”

Similar rallies will be held Saturday in Anchorage and on Tuesday in Nome.